It turns out that 2.718281828… (…and an infinite number of digits after that) is ‘e’, the base of the natural logarithm. Because it can’t be expressed as a ratio of two numbers, it’s known mathematically as “irrational” — something some bankers might say about the way Google is going public. However, ‘e’ also happens to be “transcendental,” another fancy property of a number that means it can’t be expressed by a finite number of algebraic operations. Maybe Google is making a little wordplay — saying they expect to transcend expectations — to overcome or notably exceed ordinary limits.